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Don’t do interviews, do discussions

thinkingthrough.substack.com

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Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#341

Post by david_allison »

cj wrote: post #332
cutthegrass2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, agree. 95% of the code I write is owned by my employer and is under NDA various other privacy / IP laws. The 5% that isn't, has no place in an interview. It's a bunch of brittle glue code automating and backing up data between my devices. "Passion projects" in my "spare time"... maybe once the kids have grown up and flown the nest... Leetcode is easy... I memorise a bunch of stuff, do the dance and pass the inte…

> 95% of the code I write is owned by my employer and is under NDA various other privacy / IP laws. True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP (like util functions, and an integration syncing records from your backend the Salesforce, or something tangential to the business outside the core product) May technically be breaking you…

> True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP

What? Yes. I expect I'd be in prison for a few years. Your interview approach selects for people who don't follow their NDAs

Sergey Aleynikov went to prison over copying GPL code.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#342

Post by slingnow »

harry8 wrote: post #220
somberi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what you said exactly happens, but not often enough to negate the value of opening up the otherwise clammed up candidate. Hopefully, the first part where the human human chat happens, the candidate is able to see that the intent is to have a genuine conversation, albeit with a more senior person (aka older) person on the other side. Where I differ from you is the zero-payoff framing. There have been cases where…

Yours looks like a classic "yes but I'm different" response. Maybe you really are different. I couldn't possibly say. Just be aware of it? Or maybe there's a way to have your cake and eat it too? Like put on a stupid hat and say "I'm going to play 'Joe Obnoxious the Arrogant' and be critical, this is not how we talk design around here in general but it cuts us the to the chase about something you know. Stand up to an…

It sounds like the OPs method not only allows people to shine by diving into what they've built, but it would also filter out people like yourself, who are so unbelievably sensitive that it would be a nightmare to work around all of your triggers.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#343

Post by rimliu »

dtoms wrote: post #113
01100011 wrote: post #30

Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might want to verify the resume and confirm they have a basic grasp of the relevant skills. If I'm hiring for a high-output FANG job, you bet your ass we're going to the whiteboard. Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can think on you…

so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG every 1.5 years...

For a long time I am considering anything coming out of F an anti-pattern and an example of bad engineering.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#344

Post by fidesomnes »

philbert101 wrote: post #250
swman wrote: post #197

I wish I could a 2-3 hour interview where I (or the candidate) showcase one of my projects and explain the architectural details and decisions in addition to showing any cool/hairy/insane code that got the job done. We can discuss those things and see how to improve them, or laugh at the crazy solutions. Honestly how many times do I need to rehearse these dumbass algos (blah blah blah, so I'll optimize for space with…

This is pretty pretty much what I tried to achieve here https://github.com/philbert/take-home-tech-test The point is to have a conversation about a project that the candidate understands well and is passionate about rather than asking them a bunch of questions that we already know the answers to. Before the interview we review the code base and try to understand what it’s doing by the documentation provided in the re…

oh for fucks sake its a job of messing around with digital files for a paycheck.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#345

Post by thadk »

Some of these comments, like attending to relative position in space, remind me of Phil Agre's fantastic "How to Help Someone Use a Computer" (1996) – https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/how-to-help.html

Phil's instructions mix some good influences and can be used when working with people in other mediated spot environments like interviews/discussions too.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#346

Post by mattkrause »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #247
swman wrote: post #197

I wish I could a 2-3 hour interview where I (or the candidate) showcase one of my projects and explain the architectural details and decisions in addition to showing any cool/hairy/insane code that got the job done. We can discuss those things and see how to improve them, or laugh at the crazy solutions. Honestly how many times do I need to rehearse these dumbass algos (blah blah blah, so I'll optimize for space with…

As an interviewee I'd like this too, but as an interviewer I wonder if it actually has enough signal. One of the problems I've found with these kinds of conversations is that people can plausibly BS quite a bit about projects, or their role in them. Maybe I started a new compiler or something at my company but didn't have the chops for it and the project flamed out. If I lie and said that all my goals were achieved a…

Other fields seem to do just fine with this approach.

If you interview for an R&D position at (e.g.,) a biotech company, in academia, or one of the National Labs, you're usually asked to prepare a 30-45 minute presentation about your past work. New grads usually use their MS/PhD thesis defense slides; other folks often have a conference talk they can expand. Some places also do "chalk talks" where you describe how you'd approach a new problem of your or their choosing.

This presentation is the jumping-off point for the rest of your interviews. If you talked about building a compiler, someone is going to ask for details about the lexer, maybe have you do implement a very simple tokenizer on a white board. Another person will ask how you measured its correctness/performance. Yet another may dig into how you organized the team doing the work, etc.

Maybe, as you propose, someone else helped with parts of the work. This wouldn't necessarily weed that out. Nevertheless, I'd argue that being able to justify the decisions that were made--and cogently explain when/why they might be different--isn't actually BS; it's understanding.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#347

Post by Clubber »

snickerer wrote: post #335
native_samples wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this isn't some sort of mass hysteria but based on practical experience. Yes, it's hard to believe. New interviewers are routinely shocked the first few times they are asked to take a candidate through a coding test. That's why everyone should just ignore the advice in the article - it's wrong. If you want to hire competent programmers, you need to test them rigorously by watching them code, in front of you. Ev…

I am an interviewer for C++ job candidates in the automotive industry. I do a coding task first and a Q&A afterwards — because these are the requirements. I did many interviews. My experience is: I could skip the Q&A completely. Most candidates could answer the questions just fine after reading the Wikipedia article for 10 minutes. In the interview I can see if they already read it or not. But I don't think it matter…

>half of the candidates (with master degrees and 'years of industry experience') fail.

If half the candidates with a master's degree in CS are failing your test, that should be a pretty huge red flag to you that your test might have an issue. What question are they failing?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#348

Post by kayodelycaon »

midasuni wrote: post #105
jstx1 wrote: post #15

"Discussion interviews" can suck because they're a lie. You're still being examined, and now you have to pretend that you aren't being examined in addition to performing well. Some of my best interviewing experiences have been when as part of the interview I ended up having a discussion about something. But the interview didn't explicitly start with that format in mind. Some of the worst interviewing interviewing exp…

You’re being examined at an interview, but you’re also examining the person you may choose to work for. If you don’t need to take the job you’re in a much more powerful position and you can have an honest discussion to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

I’ve never had the benefit of not needing a job while doing interviews. Doing interviews while I’m at a job isn’t viable for me.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#349

Post by sokoloff »

nostrebored wrote: post #330
csydas wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure: https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/3-im-recruitin... Screen applications consistently. Apply the same standards to everyone applying for the same position. Effectively, you should have the exact same criterion for all candidates for the same position and avoid "on the fly" questions/too heavily customizing it. The legal discussion on all of this has basically boiled down to that you must ensure you'r…

This is dramatically more complicated than it actually is. It does come back to competencies and structures. For instance, at AWS, this boils down to wide technical competencies and leadership principles. Of the nearly 100 interviews I did at AWS, I probably never had two that were very close, just due to people’s resumes, prior experience, and breadth of interests. But, if you wanted to ask the recruiting team to ad…

I wonder how much of the last point is a high tolerance for false negatives? If a candidate is that close to a no-hire, maybe a rational choice is to say “No, you’re welcome to re-apply in N months.”

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#350

Post by Clubber »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #283
dgb23 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your examples, did they go through a coding challenge / whiteboard process?

Across all examples I can think of - some yes, some no. It's not material to my point either way. I was only arguing that for some company's being very afraid of bad hires may be sensible and dismissing their concerns as hysteria does not seem obviously correct to me.

>In your examples, did they go through a coding challenge / whiteboard process?

I think he was trying to point out that if some of the bad candidates had passed a whiteboard test, it brings in to the questions of the effectiveness of whiteboard tests to filter out bad candidates.

I remember a guy we hired years ago who answered all the tech questions we asked with flying colors. He was lazy and unmotivated and ended up dumping all his work on other people (me). I would have much rather had a motivated person who I had to teach some stuff to rather than him.

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